What We Believe About Sexuality, Marriage, and Gender

Valor Church does not teach that homosexuality, sexual sin, or in fact any sin, automatically sends anyone to hell. We reject this misrepresentation totally.

We say it first because we have been misrepresented, and because it is the heart of the gospel.

What condemns a person is not their sin pattern but the rejection of Jesus Christ. Every person who walks through Valor's doors is a sinner. So is every person on our stage, in our pulpit, and on our elder board. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). The ground at the foot of the cross is level. Every person's only hope, ours included, is repentance and faith in the atoning work of Jesus Christ.

Paul names sexual sin among those who will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). But the next verse is the turn the whole gospel hangs on:

Read that carefully. Paul is not promising that following Jesus erases every desire or struggle in this life. He is promising something deeper: that no sin and no past puts a person beyond the reach of God's grace. The gospel is not a statement of who is shut out. It is the announcement that anyone can be washed, set apart, and made new. That door is open to you.

In the beginning, God made humanity in His image. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:27). This is not incidental. Sex is not an accident of biology or a construct of culture. It is God's deliberate, creative act.

Two sexes, male and female. This is the architecture of humanity as God designed it and called good.

So hear this plainly: the sex you were born with is not a mistake. It is God's creative and sovereign declaration over your life.

We do not pretend the struggle is imaginary. For some people, the distress of feeling at odds with their own body is real, heavy, and not something they chose. We will not wave that away, and we will not treat anyone carrying it as an enemy. That distress is not itself sin. It is a weight to be carried to Christ, not a verdict against the person carrying it.

What we believe, and what we will not move off of, is where the answer is found. We do not believe the answer to that distress is found in altering the body God gave, whether through medical intervention meant to present as a different sex, or through the social and ideological denial of one's biological sex. We believe that road does not deliver what it promises. The deeper healing is found in the God who knew you before you were formed (Jeremiah 1:5) and who declares that what He made is good. God does not make mistakes. He makes people.

Marriage is God's institution, not a human invention. From the beginning it was designed for one man and one woman in a lifelong covenant.

This is the historic teaching of the Christian church, rooted in Scripture, affirmed by Jesus himself, and consistent with the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

Sexual union is a gift, one God placed exclusively within this covenant. Valor Church does not view sex as shameful. We view it as sacred. It is designed for intimacy, covenant-sealing, and the gift of new life. That is precisely why we believe it belongs where God placed it: inside the lifelong covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.

Anything that departs from God's design falls short of His intention for human flourishing. This is not a personal opinion or a cultural preference. It is the consistent teaching of Scripture across both Testaments.

Here we have to be precise, because precision is where grace and truth stop fighting each other.

Temptation is not the same as sin. To experience an attraction, a desire, or a pull you did not ask for is part of living in a fallen world. Jesus himself "in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). A believer who experiences same-sex attraction, or who battles desire of any kind, has not thereby sinned. They are not second-class in this church. They are family, fighting the same fight toward holiness that every one of us is fighting.

Practice is where sin enters. Sexual immorality, acted out, is sin in all its forms. This includes premarital sex, adultery, pornography, homosexual practice, and any sexual expression outside the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.

Sexual sin is not merely a rule violation. Paul calls it a sin against one's own body (1 Corinthians 6:18), a body that, for the believer, is a temple of the Holy Spirit. It carries a real spiritual cost. We name it clearly, the same way we name our own sin clearly, because a church that will not tell you the truth cannot actually love you.

There is a difference between a person and the ideology that is lying to them. We refuse to confuse the two.

To the person who is hurting, confused, or wrestling with who they are: we are for you. We will protect you. We will not raise our voice at you.

But we will raise our voice. Not at the vulnerable, but at the powers, the ideologies, the systems, and the cultural machinery that prey on the vulnerable and indoctrinate the young into lies that contradict the way God made them. We will name those things for what they are, and we will not apologize for it.

We do this on purpose, because Scripture tells us exactly where the real battle is:

Our anger, when we have it, points up, not down. It points at the ideas and the industries that profit off confusion and sell destruction to people made in the image of God, often to the youngest and most defenseless among us.

Understand why, because this matters. This is not a culture war. We are not interested in scoring political points or winning an argument on the internet. We oppose these ideologies for one reason: we believe, to our core, that they are destructive. Destructive to the individual who is handed a lie about who they are, and destructive to a society that tries to build itself on any foundation other than the truth of how God made us. To stay quiet would not be loving. It would be cowardice dressed up as kindness.

This is the pattern Jesus himself set. He saved his sharpest words for the religious systems that crushed people (Matthew 23) and his gentlest words for the broken person standing in front of him (John 8:1-11). So will we. We will love the person with everything we have, and we will tell the truth about the lie with everything we have. We see no contradiction between the two.

These are hard truths in a hard cultural moment. We know that. We also know that behind every theological category is a person. A person made in God's image. A person Jesus died for. A person who deserves both honesty and dignity, no matter where they stand.

Valor Church is not a place of hostility, and it never will be. If you are living outside of God's design for sexuality and gender, you are welcome here. If you disagree with everything on this page, you are welcome here. Come sit with us. We will be honest. We will be gracious. We will treat you the way God treats us, with a relentless, pursuing love that meets people exactly where they are.

What we will not do is tell you something we do not believe is true. We will not call sin something other than what Scripture calls it, including our own. We will not revise God's design to make it more comfortable for anyone, ourselves included. We will be honest that if you are living outside of God's design, repentance is needed, and we say that only because we love you and want you to thrive. And we will live that standard out first, as pastors, as leaders, and among everyone who calls Valor home, before we ever ask it of you. We believe the most loving thing a church can do is tell you the truth and then walk the long road with you toward the One who makes all things new.

That is who we are. That is who we intend to remain.

Valor Church holds to the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 as its confessional standard. This doctrinal statement is consistent with that confession and with the historic teaching of the Christian church.